Results tagged “murder”

An obese man's attempt to re-write the "Twinkie Defense" failed yesterday when a NJ jury found him guilty of murdering his son-in-law — despite claims that he was too fat to commit the crime. Williams Ates, 65, was convicted of slaying Paul Duncsak in 2006, then driving 21 hours to his mother's house in Louisiana for an alibi. Prosecutors argued that before killing Duncsak, who was involved in a bitter custody dispute with Ates' daughter, Ates "bought books detailing how to build a gun silencer [and] did Internet searches on how to pick locks and how to commit the perfect murder." The defense said the 285-pound Florida native couldn't have sprinted upstairs and accurately shot the victim — or driven all the way to his mother's home without frequent breaks. He will be sentenced next month.

The brazen drive-by shooting in Williamsburg yesterday apparently started as a dispute between motorists. A gunman in a green Nissam Maxima fired at 38-year-old Ramon Blas, hitting the victim once in the side as he sat inside his car sometime after 2:30 pm. Wounded, Blas managed to drive his gray BMW SUV a few blocks before colliding with a parked car at the corner of Lorimer and Ten Eyck streets. He then "staggered into the driver's compartment of a slowly moving UPS van," the Post reports. The UPS driver ran into a nearby packaging store, shouting: "Someone just got shot inside my truck," according to the Daily News.

A gunman in car shot and killed a 38-year-old driver on Lorimer Street between Ten Eyck and Maujer streets in a shockingly brazen slaying in Williamsburg this afternoon. The perp pulled up beside the victim — described by police as a Hispanic male — at around 2:30 pm and fired into the his car, hitting him in the side, according to police. The wounded driver crashed his car and exited the vehicle before being transported to Woodhull Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The woman accused of fatally beating her 4-year-old son was allowed to attend his wake yesterday. Myrna Chenphang was escorted from Rikers Island to the Robeson and Brown Funeral Home in Brooklyn to see Jayden Lenescar in an open casket; she was reportedly weeping. Chenphang and her boyfriend Steven Dadaille face second-degree murder charges for little Jayden's death.

A man accused of murdering his son-in-law in Ramsey, NJ is claiming that he couldn't have committed the crime because he's too fat. William Ates, 65, is on trial for the 2006 shooting death of 40-year-old Paul Duncsak, who was shot six times in his NJ home, and who was in the middle of a bitter custody-dispute with Ates' daughter.

A jury found Jamal Winter guilty of second-degree murder for the murder of Kyong-Sook Woo, a dry cleaner in Windsor Terrace. Winter, who was out on parole, was accused of strangling Woo and then using ammonia to burn off his fingerprints. He now faces up to 25 years in prison. The jury did not convict him of first-degree murder; a juror told the Daily News, "We were all over the map. But it was not a compromise."

The owner of the Washington Heights restaurant where a bouncer was killed early yesterday told the media, "There was an argument between customers and the security guy who worked for us at the time tried to break up the argument and took the guys outside. When he took the guys outside, one of them probably had a knife and tried to stab the other guy, I don't know. But unfortunately the security guy got hurt," adding, "This never happens here. We feel sorry for the family of the worker." No arrests have been made.

1010 WINS reports, "An employee of a Manhattan restaurant was stabbed to death early Tuesday morning after ejecting three men from the 24 hour eatery, police said. The three men were taken into police custody and were being questioned." The 40-something victim worked at Casa Del Mofongo, which is open 24 hours and located on St Nicholas Ave between 182nd St & 183rd St.

Yesterday afternoon, a 16-year-old boy was fatally shot outside Metropolitan Diploma Plus High in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. Malachi Cotton was standing at a city bus stop by when, the Daily News reports, "Three men approached him around 3:15 p.m., police said. The armed trio, who were targeting Cotton, fired several shots at him and then fled."

A Brooklyn mother charged with beating her 4-year-old son to death over the course of two days told a friend she was "possessed by a spirit" during the savage attacks. Suspect Myrna Chen Phang was visited Sunday at the NYPD's 71st Precinct station house by a friend, Rosa Adrien, who tells the Daily News, "[Phang] said something came over her, almost like a spirit. She said she didn't know why she let it happen." 4-year-old Jayden Lenescar died Friday afternoon after being beaten repeatedly with fists, a clothes hanger and belt buckle.

Police say that a beloved NJ priest was stabbed 32 times by the church's janitor. Jose Feliciano, 64, who was among the group of people who initially found Rev. Ed Hinds' body in the rectory of St. Patricks in Chatham, NJ on Friday, allegedly confessed and was charged with murder.

After deciding a 4-year-old Brooklyn boy's Friday death was suspicious, due to the bruising on his body, police have now charged his mother and her boyfriend with second-degree murder. Myrna Chen Phang, 25, and Steven Dadaille, 26, allegedly beat little Jayden Lenescar for two days, using their fists, a clothes hanger and belt. The boy's grieving father Mackenzy Lenescar said, "The only way I will feel anything is if someone could bring my son back."

Yesterday, the beaten and bloodied body of a beloved church pastor was found in the rectory kitchen of St. Patrick's in Chatham, NJ. A friend said of Rev. Edward "Father Ed" Hinds, 61, "He was an exceptional, exceptional ma. He didn’t offend anybody. He didn’t take on issues, he didn’t use the pulpit to take on anything political. A lot of time he’d talk and he’d say, ‘Well where’s God in this?’" Morris County prosecutor Robert Bianchi said, "The fact is that this was a community leader whose arms were wide open to downtrodden. Maybe one of those individuals was involved. That kind of generosity is preyed upon."

The 18-year-old who is accused of firing a gun into the air—and killing a 92-year-old woman in her Bronx home—pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder. Jamal Blair is being held without bail and his lawyer is trying to explain that his client has had a tough childhood, "In 1993 he was 2 years old and witnessed his father murder his mother. He stayed with his mother's body until his grandparents found discovered what happened almost a day later. It still stays with him."

Although Jamal Blair, the 18-year-old arrested for killing a 92-year-old Bronx woman, allegedly confessed to police, he told reporters last night, "I didn't do it. I was framed by the police. The police did it, they framed me, man. No justice."

Prosecutors say the man accused of killing a Windsor Terrace dry cleaning owner last year poured ammonia on his victim's neck after he strangled her to burn off fingerprints and DNA. But he left the bottle of ammonia behind in the store, providing investigators with a crucial fingerprint. Yesterday Supreme Court jurors began hearing evidence against Jamal Winter, who's charged with murdering beloved shop owner Kyong-Sook Woo, a 62-year-old grandmother, on May 15, 2008. Winter was in violation of parole at the time of the murder, but was on the streets because of a justice system failure.

Police are searching for clues in the Sunday evening murder of 18-year-old Brian Scott. Scott, known as a one of urban inline skating's "rising stars," was fatally shot at the Parkside Donut and Kennedy Fried Chicken on Flatbush Avenue, while two others were injured. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said, "We have no reason, at this time, to think that Brian Scott was anything but an innocent bystander. We are still, obviously, doing an aggressive investigation."

Last night around 8:30 p.m., a man walked into the Parkside Donut and Coffee Shop on Parkside Avenue in Brooklyn and opened fire. Three people were shot; one of them, 18-year-old Brian Scott, died from his injuries while the other two, a 20-year-old man and a 23-year-old man, are in stable condition.

Miguel Matias pleaded guilty to strangling his 14-year-old daughter and throwing her body into a Bronx building's boiler in 2008. Earlier this year, rape and incest charges were added against him, because DNA evidence showed his daughter was 12 weeks pregnant with his child. With this plea, Matias faces up to 25 years to life in prison; his lawyer said he would have faced up to 50 years to life if the case went to trial, "We had to [plead]. It’s not a triable case."

In the latest rap rivalry mess, a murder that occurred on September 27th of this year is now being tied to an assault case back in 2007. Or not! So many theories. The Daily News reports that 32-year-old Lowell Fletcher was recently murdered just two weeks after making parole; he was behind bars for allegedly covering for one of 50 Cent's sidekicks (Tony Yayo), who may or may not have pistol-whipped the 14-year-old son of music producer Jimmy Rosemond (a rival of the G-Unit).

In August, a man was killed in a South Street Seaport parking lot, apparently after a dispute that occurred on a party boat that had been docked at Pier 17. Now the NYPD says they have arrested a suspect.

The man suspected of fatally stabbing a man outside the midtown's James Farley Post Office on Sunday afternoon was apparently found dead at his girlfriend's apartment yesterday. The police had identified the suspect as Sir'mone McCaulla, 28, yesterday morning and police think his body was found in a Philadelphia apartment hours later.

Yesterday, police released photographs of the man suspected of a fatal stabbing on the steps of the James Farley Post Office on Sunday. The broad daylight incident in a busy stretch of 8th Avenue—across from Madison Square Garden and Penn Station—was witnessed by a number of people, including a German tourist who took the photographs. And now it seems another police officer recognizes the suspect.

Yesterday, hundreds of people attended gathered in an El Dorado Hills, California for the funeral mass of Annie Le, the Yale graduate student who was murdered in a Yale research building a few weeks ago. Bishop Jaime Soto of the Sacremento Archdiocese said, "We do not let cruelty or violence own the sorrow. We let love own the sorrow. It was Annie’s love for her family and friends, for her fiancé that give us such sorrow as well as our love for her."

Police are searching for the body of Annie Morrell Petrillo, who jumped off the Tappan Zee Bridge on Thursday evening. Petrillo's mother, Anne Scripps Douglas, an heir to the Scripps newspaper fortune, was found bludgeoned on December 31, 1993 and later died from her injuries; the main suspect was Petrillo's stepfather, who killed himself by committing suicide off the Tappan Zee Bridge on New Year's Day 1994.

Jessica Del Rocco, the high school girlfriend of Yale murder suspect Raymond Clark, said she had needed "police intervention" to get out of her relationship with him when he was a senior at Branford High in Connecticut. She also described him as controlling, telling her what clothes she could wear, who she could see, and how loud and how often to talk.

[UPDATE BELOW] More reports of Mister Softee's violent threats against rival ice cream trucks have surfaced. And this time the target is the infinitely superior ice cream purveyor Van Leeuwen, whose Twitter feed announces, "Truck had to leave midtown :( . There were 3 Mr. Softie Trucks threatening our drivers life. Scary stuff! Sorry guys, maybe another time." Or maybe you just stay off Softee's turf and your fancy trucks don't accidentally burst into flames, capisce?

Makenzie Vega, a 15-year-old actress who plays Julianna Margulies's daughter in CBS drama The Good Wife, was staying in the room directly above the one where investment executive Andree (Sara) Bejjani was found murdered Saturday. Vega says that hours before the murder she had a retrospectively scary exchange with suspect Derrick Praileau, the housekeeping manager at the Essex House who has confessed to stabbing Bejjani with a 10-inch bread knife during a violent rape attempt.

A housekeeping manager at the Essex House has confessed to the stabbing murder of Sara Bejjani after investigators say he attempted to rape the woman who had been residing inside the luxury hotel along Central Park South. 29-year-old Derrick Praileau had worked at the hotel since he was 17 and is described as being known for having a "flash temper." He told police that he showed up drunk before his 6 a.m. shift Saturday, used his key to get into Bejjani's 10th floor apartment and then admits, "I just lost it."

A businesswoman from Dubai was found yesterday inside a condo at the Essex House, disrobed, with her throat slashed and a jumprope around her neck. 44-year-old Andree (Sara) Bejjani, president of Royal Investments, LLC, a real estate investment firm based in Dubai, had been staying at the luxury hotel on Central Park South since August. This morning cops arrested an Essex House employee, Derrick Praileau, but have not yet charged him.